It’s never fun when a Kickstarter project you’re interested in fails, and it’s even less enjoyable when you see it cancelled when it looks like it won’t make its goals. It seems the latter was the reason for the death of the Rayman By RémiRayman OST orchestral project. When I reported about it a few weeks ago, the project was in full swing and hoping to meet it’s basic goal of creating a brand new jazz/symphonic arrangement album for the original Rayman game, composed by Rémi Gazel. Since then, however, it seems things did not pick up the steam the project directors were hoping for. On an update to the project, Gazel’s team states the project hadn’t even reached 45% funding of its €50,000 goal as the deadline drew near.

We already spent some time analyzing what went wrong. We changed our introduction video that was probably not good enough at the start, we unveiled a full support from Michel Ancel and did as many press relations and communications as we could. But it looks that there is nothing we can do anymore to revive this project. We missed our chance, the “momentum” as it is called has passed.

It’s often hard to see projects not makes their goals due to lack of exposure, or press campaigns that come well after the project launches. We received word of the Kickstarter well after it had already been launched, and with crowdfunding being as big a method of launching projects large or small, not getting a proper leg-up on promoting your campaign can have dire consequences.

Fortunately, the project team is not completely squashing hope for future endeavors.

All the team behind this project, starting of course with Remi, still deeply believe this is a very cool project. So, rather than leading it to its grave we decided to stop this campaign. Our goal now is to collect as many feedback as possible and to start working on a comeback. We believe there is chances to make Rayman by Remi possible by making things differently. We will take our time and make it happen.

The Kickstarter update currently includes a link for feedback on how to improve the project campaign, should they relaunch. We’ll keep an eye out to see if the project reasserts itself in the future, and hopefully some day Rayman will gets its musical makeover.

If you’re a Jimmy Fallon fan, you probably caught Shigeru Miyamoto suddenly pop up with hip-hop group The Roots to play the theme from Super Mario Bros., and if you didn’t you can now!

To help showcase the Nintendo Switch being debuted on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the Mario legend was the night’s musical guest along with The Roots, strumming away as Fallon acted appropriately.

With The Last Guardian (actually, really, finally) shipping this week I was able to redeem one of the Amazon pre-order bonuses ahead of time, a 4-song Mini Soundtrack. It serves as a preview of both the game’s orchestral score by composer Takeshi Furukawa and the ‘Last Guardian Composer’s Choice PS4 Music App’ that Sony announced in early November. Let’s take a look at the app and the music inside.

Back in January of this year we let OSV readers know that La-La Land Records was taking fan requests for their most wanted unreleased or rare Star Trek music. The set was originally planned to be released as a 3 CD set in September to coincide with the 50th anniversary, but now just in time for the holiday season arrived as an incredible 4 disc set that went on sale Tuesday November 29, 2016.

La-La Land Records and CBS present, STAR TREK: 50th ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION – MUSICAL RARITIES FROM ACROSS THE STAR TREK UNIVERSE, a sensational celebration of 50 years of Star Trek music in honor of the landmark series’ five-decade milestone. Travel at warp through Star Trek’s spellbinding musical history, with rare and exciting selections from the franchise’s varied television series, films, games, themed attractions and more!

DISC ONE features cues from the original, classic STAR TREK TV series (most of which were released on our TOS BOX SET, but have been sourced from newly discovered elements), as well the oft-requested STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE track “Inner Workings,” (featuring the wind machine more prominently) and STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN’s “End Titles,” (without the narration as heard on previous soundtrack releases.)

DISC TWO showcases the official world premiere release of music from STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES, the beloved 70’s Filmation TV series, as well as original STAR TREK-inspired compositions from Ron Jones, and STAR TREK BORG, a score by Dennis McCarthy from an interactive 1996 movie/computer game.

DISC THREE features previously unreleased scores from STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, including such episodes “Coming of Age,” “The Hunted,” “Tapestry” and more, as well as the series’ trailer music.

DISC FOUR contains more unreleased THE NEXT GENERATION, including “Deja Q,” “Elementary, Dear Data,” and others, as well as unreleased demo tracks from DEEP SPACE NINE, and VOYAGER, original score from the famed Las Vegas attraction, STAR TREK: THE EXPERIENCE, and still more!

Produced by Lukas Kendall and mastered by Doug Schwartz and James Nelson, this special collection contains a 48-page booklet with exclusive liner notes by writer Jeff Bond and stellar art design by Mark Banning. This treasure trove of musical gems from the most celebrated sci-fi television series of all time has a total running time of more than five full hours and is limited to 3000 units.

La-La Land Records

I am simply overjoyed that some of my requests made the set, including my most wanted piece “La Paloma (traditional)” from the Star Trek: The next Generation episode “Deja Q”. The music from the video game Star Trek: Borg also get its first official release on this set, it had been previously been released by the composer on a promotional CD-R which is no longer available. You can purchase the set for $49.98 on La-La Land Records website.

Next month marks the 15th year of the main iteration of MAGFest; the music and gaming festival that started in 2002 and has blown up into a series of multiple nerd music culture events since. Returning to Nation Harbor to the Gaylord National Hotel from January 5-8th, the event is expected to sell out of badges, so if you were waiting on the full announcements of who will be performing this year before jumping on registering, we’ll help you out.

Last week marked the final music performance announcements for MAGFest 2017. Over the past month, video game artists and bands, chiptune artists and nerdcore performers have been steadily revealed for the upcoming event. If you hadn’t been keeping up, here’s the full lineup:

If Rez Infinite or Thumper left you looking to scratch a newfound action/rhythm itch then take a look at Aaero from Mad Fellows. Coming in February to Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, the game melds its gorgeous low-poly art style with a thumping electronic soundtrack from Noisia, Flux Pavilion, Katy B, The Prototypes, Neosignal and more.

“We have been buzzing with excitement since we created the very first prototype of Aaero. Combining our favourite elements of rail-shooters and music gameplay has created something truly unique that we’re very proud of,” states Paul Norris, founder and Creative Director at Mad Fellows. “Aaero is based on a deep, fundamental synergy between music, gameplay and visuals. We’ve strived to create a unique and intuitive experience that exhilarates with bold visuals and an incredible soundtrack.”

Along with the Rez-inspired on-rails shooting Aaero adds segments of line-tracing, melody-matching action. It looks to make for a nice change of pace from the typical nonstop, lock-on firing mechanics. Check it out in action in the video below and look for more folks to start talking about Aaero after its appearance next week at the PlayStation Experience in California.

It is now officially the holiday season, and we can no longer deny the onslaught of questionably festive music that started well before December graced 2016. The good news is that there tend to be a good handful of arrangement albums and collaborative efforts each year towards building fun and interesting holiday music albums, both video game related and not, to keep us all mostly sane. The fine people of Scarlet Moon Records have kicked off the season with one of our first offerings of such sanity-saving musical projects with their Scarlet Moon Christmas Album 2016.

Featuring joint contributions from both video game and film composers, including Hiroki Kikuta (Secret of Mana), Dale North (Silent Horror), Vince DiCola (Transformers, Rocky IV), Robyn Miller (Myst, Riven) and more over nine tracks, Scarlet Moon Christmas Album 2016 is a charming and subtle way of easing yourself into more festive feelings.

“Dale North and I are both massive fans of Christmas music. After releasing the Scarlet Moon Christmas EP in 2014, we wanted to rekindle that passion by creating even more Christmas-themed tracks to get music fans of all ages and genres in the spirit of the season. And as it would turn out, most of the artists on the roster love Christmas music just as much as we do!” – Jayson Napolitano, Producer

The track listing gives you an idea of what to expect to hear, including both video game music arrangements and arrangements of classic Christmas tunes.

Even if you’re not a huge Christmas person, the album is worth checking out. I myself have a hard time getting into any festive mood around the holidays, but when Vince DiCola’s rendition of “Jingle Bells” makes me envision a Transformers Christmas Special (Complete with transforming reindeer, because why not?), it’s hard not to get a little into the holiday spirit.

Scarlet Moon Christmas Album 2016 is available now for purchase on LOUDr, and soon on iTunes and Spotify.

Gather ‘round, video game music nerds—I’m not going to let you sleep on what I’m calling right now as my favorite video game score of the year: the Owlboy OST.

After a lengthy development process, D-Pad Studios released Owlboy earlier this month to wildly positive reviews. I sat down to play the game the literal minute I got home from work, and was instantly enraptured—not because the gameplay blew me away, but because of the sheer beauty of the score.

If you’ve also been thinking about the year in game music releases you may remember 8Bit Music Power from way back in February. It was the album from Japanese chiptune artists like Hally, Professor Sakamoto and Saitone that was released on an actual Famicom cartridge. While Play-Asia sold out of their allotment fairly quickly (Amazon Japan still has 8 left in stock) there’s now a much easier way to listen instead of dragging around an old console.

A much more convenient (but way less cool) CD version of the album was released last week in Japan with two bonus tracks. The album is available from Play-Asia for $22.99 but if you can hold out until February 2017 there’s an even sweeter deal coming. For just $1 more you can pre-order the CD and an 80-page, full-color book with exclusive interviews and stories about the album’s creation. The best part, it’s been translated into English. You can take a look at some of the vibrant page layouts here and put down the $23.99 to secure a copy for yourself.

After E3 this year I wrote about my top five most anticipated soundtracks, and on that list at number three you’ll see How We Soar. The game which is being developed by Penny Black Studios as a title for Playstation VR. Steve Burke has worked previously on the music for the games Kameo:Elements of Power and Viva Pinata.

Over the past couple of days Penny Black Studios has been releasing excerpts from the game’s soundtrack on their Soundcloud page. I imagine that they will continue to release more excerpts leading up to the game’s release. I was actually tipped off about this from a tweet by Graeme Norgate who shared a link to the latest score clip. You can sample all of the clips below.

“The Depths” features some lovely strings and long noted cello, which creates a wonderful sense of awe before the sample ends.

“Across Space and Time” opens with elegant soft piano accompanied by equally delicate strings which play off each other gracefully.

“Romance is like…” to be honest if my favorite piece because it has some lovely high toned woodwinds and warm cello melody.

Keep checking back with OSV as we’ll be sharing further details of the soundtrack when we know more. According to PowerUpGamingHow We Soar will be released next week. I for one will happily be enjoying these excerpts leading up to its release.

It’s that time of the year again! With Black Friday and Cyber Monday only a few days away, many music software companies have already begun offering their holiday deals and discounts. Like last year, we’ve compiled a list of places having sales on their music and audio tools. More sales are bound to crop up as we get closer to the weekend, so we’ll be updating this list as much as we can. With all of that said, here are some of the sales going on right now or coming up this weekend.

Rémi Gazel, the composer for the original Rayman, has decided he isn’t quite done with giving his compositions some love, as originally reported by Shawn last year. In a new Kickstarter campaign, Gazel seeks to revitalize the soundtrack for the 1995 Playstation game with a 12-track updated album.

For the past year, Rémi has been working with friends on this project to record a full new album based on Jazz/Rock rearrangements of his original songs. A few months ago, he got the greenlight from Ubisoft to do so (Ubisoft supports « Rayman by Rémi » project but is not associated with the project nor will get any income from the Kickstarter campaign.)

So here we are, asking for your help to make it come true!

Originally, Gazel sought to create a “Rayman Live Music Tour” and even started in its creation with new orchestrations. However what he eventually settled on was to release an entire album using those same concepts he’d had for the live tour.

The campaign is currently looking for a base goal of around $53,000, which would not only produce digital and CD digipaks of the album but also a vinyl release in conjunction with Black Screen Records. Basic pledge tiers include $10 to nab the full digital album upon it’s release, $15 for the early-bird CD digipak along with digital album copy and $31 for the vinyl. You can check out more about the Rayman By Rémi – The Collector Soundtrack Album on the official Kickstarter page.

Gather ‘round, video game music nerds—I’m not going to let you sleep on what I’m calling right now as my favorite video game score of the year: the Owlboy OST.
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